By Art
Lieberman
Now that 2016’s Black
Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday have past, there is
irrefutable proof that retail businesses, regardless of size, need to realize
the need for an effective website to market their goods.
Since businesses started
to promote themselves via computer websites, there has been a huge boost in
Internet marketing. Perhaps it started with Amazon and eBay, but holiday
shoppers have clearly demonstrated that they are moving toward doing the lion’s
share of purchasing what they want on the Internet.
The statistics from this
past holiday weekend are in, and they are impressive. On Thanksgiving Day,
consumers spent $19.3 billion, an increase of nearly 12 percent from the
previous year’s start of the shopping weekend. Although shoppers used their
mobile devices more than desktop computers to locate the items they wanted, by
a 57 percent to 43 percent margin, when it came to the actual purchase, more
than 60 percent relied on their desktop computers to actually buy the items.
On Black Friday,
consumers went digital to shop, spending more than $3.4 billion on the
Internet. That also represents a huge increase over the 2015 totals, and $1.2
billion of that was on mobile phones. Once again, sales on buyers’ desktop
computers did exceed sales on mobile devices.
Cyber Monday topped the
figures from the previous weekend for Internet shopping, but not by much –
adding up to $3.45 billion in sales. All in all, Internet
shopping accounted for $12.8 billion in sales for the entire weekend, an
increase of 15 percent over the 2015 totals.
My reason to cite these
statistics is to speak to retailers who are currently using their Internet
sites merely to describe their stores. They are missing out on what could be a
huge source of new income.
To further demonstrate
this, reliable statistics from national sales groups inform us that in 2015,
total U.S. Internet sales reached $347 trillion dollars. So far this year,
including much of this past weekend, but not including the rest of 2016,
Internet sales are already approaching the $400 trillion mark, an increase of
more than 20 percent.
The reasons shoppers who
were surveyed gave as factors for buying online are: less taxes, 30 percent;
gas, 40 percent; lower prices, 55 percent; no crowds, 58 percent; greater
variety of items and more information about items, 67 percent; and, not
surprisingly, less time spent, 73 percent.
Most people went online
rather than making phone calls to order goods or services, and major concerns
for shoppers were making sure that the items arrived before the holidays, and
that shipping was free.
Another important fact
is that 90 percent of people who own an Internet-enabled device, such as a cell
phone, a computer, or a tablet have purchased goods or services online, and
they also now include older citizens, who have always been slow to become part
of the technological generation. Cell phones are greatly responsible for that
change.
So what is a retailer to
do? The answer seems obvious. If they do not already have a website for their
store or business, they should have one built, and, if they do have one, they
should make sure that it is used for direct marketing rather than being merely
an informational source.
What is required to make
that happen is to turn the website into a direct sales tool by actually placing
items for sale on the site, along with prices for the items. It will be
necessary for the retailer to have control of the website so that prices and
sale items may be changed as rapidly as necessary. The site will also need a
“shopping cart” into which consumers can place their goods, and a checkout page
where buyers can fill in delivery information and specific consumer details. On
this page the terms and conditions of the sale must be listed and a payment
arrangement, usually by credit card, should be present. Almost any webmaster
who has worked with retail sites will be able to create such a page.
Finally, realize that
creating such a sales website will not come without some expense. It is almost
as if retailers would be opening another store – another source for marketing
their goods. The better and clearer the site, the better the view of each of
the items for sale and the description of them, the more likely it will be that
the website succeeds. I would suggest that retailers seek local website
designers. Your local Chamber of Commerce might be a good source for that.
Remember that, in a sense, the website engineer is becoming a guide to your
customers’ shopping experiences.
(Art Lieberman is
President of MCPS of Central Pennsylvania, a credit card provider for
businesses in the Central Susquehanna Valley. Art also owns MCPS for
Campgrounds, the RV campground industry’s largest credit card company. He has
been in the industry for more than 18 years and conducts free webinars online
and seminars on credit cards for local retailers. He can be contacted at
877-858-9010 or at mcpsofcentralpa@yahoo.com.)
No comments:
Post a Comment